Kutai Kartanegara to kicks off historical local polls

Kutai Kartanegara to kicks off historical local polls

Kutai Kartanegara regency, in East Kalimantan, will be the
first regency in dizzying series of local direct elections across
the country -- the first ever -- when the polls open on
Wednesday. Kahar Al Bahri, the coordinator of Pokja 30 election
monitoring group, talked to The Jakarta Post's A'an Suryana and
Rusman on Monday in Samarinda, on the organization's preparations
to monitor the election. The local General Elections Commission
accredited the organization to observe the elections in the
resource-rich regency.
The following is the excerpt of the conversation.

Question: How do you prepare for your election monitoring
work?

Answer: The preparations have been going on for a month.
First, we gathered data from the Kutai Kartanegara General
Elections Commission (KPU), including the number of voters,
number of polling booths and where they are located. Then, we
prepared a team of people to do the task of election monitoring.
A total of 224 election observers, mostly university students,
have been recruited and trained, and some of them have already
been deployed to remote areas in Kutai Kartanegara a few days
ago.

The last batch will be deployed to the downtown area on June
1, when the election takes place. The volunteers will observe the
election in 200 out of a total of 1,300 polling stations in 18
districts in Kutai Kartanegara regency.

Did you find any problems during the preparations?

We haven't seen many problems so far. In terms of funding, we
have been given Rp 223 million (approximately US$23,000) by
public donations and the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute
(NDI). That will be enough to support us in monitoring the
election. We are also ready in terms of manpower. A good number
of us have been well-trained and had experience before in other
elections.

The only problem we've found so far was that some areas in the
regency have suffered from recent flooding and to date, it is
still uncertain whether elections can be held in those areas. We
also found data errors by KPU. The KPU stated in its data that
each district would have 10 polling stations, but when we really
checked it, the districts actually just had 8 each. This
inaccuracy has affected us in terms of volunteer deployment
planning.

What is your plan in overseeing elections?

We are preparing to do an exit poll and voter attitude survey.
The volunteers will record what is happening during the election,
including voting fraud, and they will later record the number of
votes. They report the findings to us, in order to allow us to
recapitulate the total votes in the regency election. The votes
are merely a sampling as we only record votes in 200 out of total
over 1,300 polling stations, but the sample should be reliable as
it will be taken in over 15 percent of polling stations
throughout the regency.

The quick count is the easiest, cheap and the most accurate
way to predict the election outcome. We will also conduct a voter
attitude survey through which the election outcome can be
explained. We will interview 10 voters in each polling station so
that in total we will obtain 2,000 samples.

Through the voter attitude survey, we will be able to find out
why people voted for a particular candidate and not another as
well as what voter expectations are from each candidate. Through
this method, we will even be able to find out whether the voters
made their choice based on bribes or vote buying.

The voter attitude survey will be useful to identify whether
voting fraud has taken place and what the people's reason were in
voting for each candidate. We are planning to announce the quick
count outcome on June 2, or a day after the election takes place,
and a day later, we will announce the results of the voter
attitude survey, to see whether the election was held in a fair
and just manner.

Do you see any potential problems during the elections?

Based on our experience during the two presidential elections
last year, telecommunications were the major problem. The
volunteers could not send a cellular phone text message to us, in
particular from those polling stations where cellular coverage
was weak or non-existent, such as areas like Kembang Janggut
district. In other areas, not only was there no cellular
coverage, but there were no fixed-line phones either.

We hope that the cellular system has reached these areas this
time so that we will not have problems in communicating the
outcomes. Another problem is that the level of political
education is still low in the regency. During the presidential
election last year, we did not see any problems, but there is
still a potential problem that people will not accept their
favorite candidates being defeated in the elections. The
politicians have to help educate the public and urge them to
accept whatever the outcome, in order to avoid possible
bloodshed.